In Mali, Muso is strengthening digital sovereignty by self-hosting its community health data using the Community Health Toolkit (CHT). In this Q&A, Muso Cloud Administrator Ulrich Anani explains how local data ownership impacts community-driven digital health solutions.
Hi Ulrich! Can you tell us about Muso’s work as a Community Health Toolkit (CHT) partner?
Muso started using the CHT to help 449 frontline health workers in Mali accurately follow protocols and avoid mistakes. It was the solution that fit best with Muso’s needs. These health workers must follow multiple protocols, and it’s not easy to remember them all.
Muso also uses technological tools for the monitoring and collection of data to really understand whether the work being done in the field is effective and truly brings added value on the ground.
How is data important to community health?
Data allows for decision-making. For professional CHWs, data shows a history of their actions. For example, it’s thanks to that data that they know if they’ve already visited a family during the month, or if they need to do visits in upcoming weeks. It serves as a historical database.
On an organizational level, the data is used to guide Muso’s actions. Is the protocol we’ve put in place truly allowing us to reach the goals we’ve set? What are the points to improve? It’s thanks to data, and the analysis of that data, that we can really track the work we’re doing and measure the impact we’re having in the field.
Muso recently decided to make the transition to self-hosting your data. Why is storing data locally important?
Over two years ago, we took over hosting the instance for Côte d’Ivoire, which we’ve been hosting ourselves since then. We recently decided to also take over the instance for Mali.
Firstly, Medic itself encourages its partners to adopt that option. Secondly, it allows us to have more visibility over the infrastructure and to have a slightly faster response time. It benefits us to have the instances at our level, so we can do closer monitoring with Medic’s help.
How do you transfer data to community ownership?
It’s a collaborative process with Medic. First, we coordinate and plan together. Then there’s a training period where Medic teaches us instance administration, since they’re very experienced with CHT instance management. They share insights not found in the documentation. After training and testing, we transfer all data from Medic’s instance to ours, check that the data is intact, set configurations, and sync devices. We update apps on devices if domains change. So it’s a whole process we define and follow with Medic.
Is there an advantage to working in partnership, rather than in silo?
I don’t think working solo is even possible. It’s Medic that developed and hosts the solution we use. You can’t take over hosting from a partner without collaborating with them.
Yes, there’s documentation you can rely on but there are also on-the-ground realities that have to be taken into account. You need to know the instance sizes Medic uses, how they’re organized. There are many technical details you can only know if you host the application yourself.
So collaboration is very important here because we’re dealing with sensitive health data. We can’t take risks doing tests that could lose data. You have to collaborate because Medic knows the application best. It makes the work easier, avoids unnecessary errors and headaches.
What is the meaning of community partnership?
Self-hosting is a pillar that allows you to facilitate instance maintenance and goes hand-in-hand with knowledge sharing. If there is a forum like Medic’s where we exchange our experiences, our difficulties, it allows all of us to help the entire CHT ecosystem to progress, so that in the long term, we create an ecosystem that’s more stable, more sustainable, and easier to maintain.
Does self-hosting instances make interoperability with health facilities easier?
Yes, because health centers are local institutions, and with local hosting, we can resolve issues quickly and directly—rather than the health centers telling us about problems they encountered and us having to escalate the problem to Medic, who manages many instances in many different contexts, and with many realities.
We already understand the local context, we’re already adapted to the reality on the ground, so the discussion with the health center is more fluid. We understand each other much faster, and we can manage the problem more easily.
And finally, what motivates you in your role at Muso?
What motivates me a lot in working at Muso is the impact I see we have on the ground. With Muso, it’s no longer just an idea—it’s tangible. You see that the work you’re doing really has a direct impact in the field. The instance is functional, operational. It makes proCHWs’ work easier and, by extension, it helps to treat more people, to really impact the population directly. So it’s that aspect that makes me happy in the work at Muso.